Word: mirthless
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...tongue and lung free rein in this fat (261 pp.) pamphlet-philippic. His accusation: For eight years (1924-32) the Stalin dictatorship exercised such a stifling censorship over Russian authors that no independent creative writer now dares raise his voice in Russia. Eastman sees Russian letters now as "a mirthless desert waste inhabited by a few sincere fanatics and a horde of unexampled experts in bootlick, blackmail and blatherskite." As victims of this Inquisition he cites the late Sergei Yessenin and Vladimir Maiakovsky (both suicides) ; the conversion of "the mirthful satirist, Valentine Kataev . . . into a faithful Sunday School moralist...
...novel Puritan's Progress (1931) Author Train credited U. S. Puritans with having a sense of mirthless humor that is a kind of coal-tar derivative from their "keen scent for the fumes of Hell." In contradistinction to this darkling humor he sets "gaiety, the most comprehensive of virtues, for it signifies faith, hope, charity and courage." In Princess Pro Tern he tosses all four ingredients generously into the potboiler, serves up a book that, whatever its faults...
...Moscow grim Nikolai Lenin's grimmer successor, Josef Stalin, showed last week that he too can coin mirthless epigrams, as hard as the nickname, "Steel," which Lenin gave him. Samples...